A 14-year-old Parker boy will be a semifinalist in the 2012 Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday morning in Washington D.C.

Frank Cahill, sponsored by The Denver Post, and 49 other students will compete starting at 8 a.m. on ESPN2. The finals, featuring from 8 to 14 spellers, will be at 6 p.m. on ESPN.

Frank, an eighth-grade student from Ave Maria Catholic School, won his trip to the national championship by winning the regional in Denver in March. He made the semis by spelling “frangible” in Wednesday morning’s second round and following that up with “ephemeral” in the third round. He then made the final cut on a written test.

Eva Kitlen, 13, of Niwot, a student at Sunset Middle School in Longmont, who won the other Colorado regional in Louisville, successfully spelled “genre” and “utile” — a French term for useful — Wednesday morning but fell short on the written test and did not make the semifinals.

In March, Frank told The Post he had been working for nine months with his spelling coach, Scott Isaacs. Isaacs won the state spelling bee in 1987, 1988 and 1989, and the national spelling bee in 1989.

There were 280 spellers competing when the contest started Wednesday morning.

More in News

The Denver Art Museum plans to funnel a $25 million one-time gift into the estimated $150 million budget for renovating its iconic North Building in time for the structure’s 50th anniversary in 2021, officials announced Thursday.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name fast-food executive Andrew Puzder, a vocal critic of substantially increasing the minimum wage and an opponent of rules that would make more workers eligible for overtime pay, as head of the Labor Department.